Black

death
Definition-Black Death
is a pandemic that
ravaged Europe
between 1347 and 1351,
taking a proportionately
greater toll of life than
any other known
epidemic or war up to
that time
 Pathology
 The Black Death is widely  Hence, the
believed to have been the origin of modern
result of plague, caused by plague
infection with the bacterium epidemics lies in
Yersinia pestis. the medieval
period.

 Modern genetic analyses  Other scientific

indicate that the strain of Y. evidence has
pestis introduced during indicated that
the Black Death is the Black Death
ancestral to all extant may have been
circulating Y. pestis strains viral in origin
known to cause disease in
humans.
 Vector of infection
The Oriental rat flea engorged with blood. This
species is the primary vector for the transmission of
Yersinia pestis, the organism responsible for
spreading bubonic plague in most plague epidemics.
Oriental rat flea infected with the Yersinia pestis
bacterium which appears as a dark mass in the
gut. The foregut of this flea is blocked by a Y.
pestis biofilm; when the flea feeds on an
uninfected host it cause infection.
 Spread
The plague that caused the
Black Death originated in
China in the early to mid-
1300s and spread along
trade routes westward to the
Mediterranean and northern
Africa. It reached southern
England in 1348 and
northern Britain and
Scandinavia by 1350.
 Symptoms
• Bleeding from
• Headach
your mouth,
nose or rectum, e
or under your
skin • Cough, with bloody mucus
(sputum)
• Chest
pain

• Abdominal pain, diarrhea and

vomiting
• Muscle
aches
• Blackening and death of tissue
(gangrene) in your extremities, most
commonly your fingers, toes and
nose
Complications
Death-Untreated plague has a high
fatality rate.

Gangrene-Blood clots in the tiny

blood vessels of your fingers and toes can
disrupt blood flow and cause that tissue to
die and it may need to be removed
(amputated)

Meningitis-Rarely, plague may cause

inflammation of the membranes
surrounding your brain and spinal cord
(meningitis)
Risk factors
bitten by fleas

exposure to rodents
scratches or bites from infected
domestic cats
contact with individuals with pneumonic
plague
The psychological effects of
the Black Death
The preoccupation with death and the
afterlife evinced in poetry, sculpture,
and painting

The Roman Catholic Church lost

some of its monopoly over the
salvation of souls as people turned to
mysticism and sometimes to excesses.
 “I have made my bed
In charnels and on coffins, where
black death
Keeps record of the trophies won”

—Percy Bysshe Shelley